(dave e)

retrospect 1

Measuring these things out by days and weeks seems not right, but there's a lot to be said about last Tuesday and Wednesday.

Evvie had been dealing with some sort of progressive lung disease for nearly a year. Her breathing was relatively shallow; sometimes she went into coughing fits that could be unsettling; sometimes her breathing was raspy, wheezy. No less than five vets worked with her over ten or eleven months, and the possible diagnoses ranged from asthma to pneumonia to cancer. She had steroid injections and antibiotics; Evvie was not the sort of cat that liked to be picked up, so holding on to her and getting pills and drops down her throat, sometimes for weeks, never pleased her or us. Early on, the medicines seemed to help. Later, not so much. Each X-ray looked worse.

When we first noticed audible breathing, her vet also noticed a murmur and started talking about Feline Cardiomyopathy. That fairly well freaked me out, as every prior checkup had earned her high marks as a very healthy cat. Natalie and I were quite proud of the fact that an early chart read, "immaculately groomed." Even when it was clear that she was in major trouble last week, we kept hearing that she was otherwise quite healthy, including her heart, which turned out to be alright. The morning of her surgery, she was angry at us for not feeding her - fasting for the procedure - but you wouldn't have been able to tell she was sick unless you watched carefully and marked her rate of respiration.

Cat personalities are cat personalities, so it doesn't seem right to draw a character sketch of Evvie. But this cat, who ran under the nearest piece of furniture when anyone but Natalie or I walked through the door (there are a few exceptions, those who kindly fed her when we were away, for instance), would hop in my lap, spent every night curled up with us in bed, chased feet moving under the covers, wouldn't eat unless one of us hung out with her or even petted her, was fascinated with whatever was on the other side of the door (this could include her own paw, reaching around or under), and maintained the softest belly ever.

She followed us from room to room, but never in an obsequious way. We'd move from office to kitchen and, two minutes later, realize she was there.

The day of the surgery, things were intially fine. The surgeon called to say the procedure, a thoracotomy, went well and that they had gotten a good sample of lung tissue for analysis. This was a diagnostic procedure, something about which we were torn - do we continue treating symptoms without knowing what's behind them, understanding that this disease will someday be her end, or do we put her through surgery and get a better shot at diagnosis? Previous procedures offered no answers. Her recovery was at first very good, but an hour or so later, the surgeon called back to say there had been trouble. She called again to say that things were better only because Evvie was again under general anasthesia. It took us a minute to realize how bad things were, but we didn't understand until we saw her.

There seem to be greater reasons not to write about what followed than there are reasons to tell it. I'll leave it be. But those hopeless minutes shattered me.

We called her Everest McLean Eubaileybanks. She was four. I hope I was as good a friend to her as she was to me.

Posted by dave at December 6, 2005 8:50 PM | TrackBack